Between the integrated logic and the consciously diverse cast, a wonderful series launch.
A computer coding club brings together a diverse group of girls to solve a mystery.
African-American Lucy is thrilled to finally be a sixth grader and able to join the coding club—she needs to learn to code as quickly as possible, as her goal is to create an app to help her cancer-stricken uncle keep on top of all of his medicines. But things don’t go as expected, and Lucy finds herself working with her former friend, Latina Sophia, intimidating Asian fashionista Maya, and new white kid Erin, and instead of using computers they’re making…sandwiches? Although it’s a valid exercise in computer-instruction logic, Lucy wants to accelerate, and she gets a chance through a mysterious note that, in code syntax, offers a deal: if Lucy follows all instructions from this and subsequent notes, she’ll learn to code. The notes guide her through exercises that illustrate fundamental coding principles in enjoyable ways and also bring her closer to her coding teammates, gaining understanding of and comradery with Maya and Erin as well as repairing the misunderstanding that ended her friendship with Sophia. But what really gets them working together is figuring out who is sending the notes—a mystery they devise a simple computer program to solve. The computer elements serve the story rather than the other way around, resulting in a substantive, amusing tale.
Between the integrated logic and the consciously diverse cast, a wonderful series launch. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54251-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Poignant and heartwarming.
Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.
Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war-torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor—the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first-ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black-and-white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.
Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781250904362
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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